THIS WEEKEND Jodie
Foster flexed her box office muscle and beat out the tag team of Tim Burton
and Johnny Depp to claim the number one spot in North America with her
new action thriller Flightplan. Burton's
animated film Corpse Bride still generated
a strong opening in second place while the frame's other new national release,
the skating comedy Roll Bounce, enjoyed
a solid start of its own. Moviegoers showed much interest in the collection
of new films and drove overall ticket sales to one of the best September
performances ever.

Buena Vista captured the number one spot for the first time since April
with Flightplan which opened with $24.6M,
according to final studio figures.
Playing ultrawide in 3,424 theaters, the PG-13 film averaged a strong $7,193
per site. The hit action entry featured Foster as a recent widow whose
daughter mysteriously disappears during a trans-Atlantic flight. For the
two-time Oscar-winning actress, it was the second biggest opening of her
career after the $30.1M bow of her last major film Panic
Room in March 2002. Foster proved once again that she can single-handedly
open a film, especially in the suspense and action genres. Flightplan
also registered the fourth-best September opening ever.

Warner Bros. settled for second place with Corpse
Bride but still attracted a large audience grossing $19.1M.
The PG-rated film which features stop-motion animation averaged a solid
$5,975 from 3,204 playdates after a scorching platform launch last weekend.
Cume stands at $19.7M. Bride offers
the voices of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter and tells the fictional
tale of a young man engaged to be wed who is transported to the more lively
land of the dead where he finds himself with another wife-to-be. Filled
with musical numbers, the well-reviewed film hopes to play throughout the
fall season and benefit from Halloween which puts moviegoers in the mood
for creepy and spooky films.

With the one-two punch that Jodie Foster and Tim Burton delivered, the
top ten surged to its third best performance ever in the month of September
with a combined $84.5M in ticket sales. That trails by a small margin the
$88.8M from September 27-29, 2002 and the $86.2M of September 19-21, 2003.
The 2002 frame was when Sweet Home Alabama
set a new opening weekend record for the month with $35.6M which to this
date has still not been beaten.

Speaking of Reese Witherspoon, her new romantic comedy Just
Like Heaven dropped from first to third place but only witnessed
a 41% decline to $9.6M. The solid sophomore frame pushed the ten-day cume
for the DreamWorks release to $29.8M. Budgeted at $58M, Heaven
could reach a respectable $55-60M.

Rolling into fourth place in its first weekend was Fox Searchlight's
comedy Roll Bounce with $7.6M from
only 1,625 locations. Averaging $4,659 per theater, the PG-13 film about
roller skating life in the 1970s starred Bow Wow, Nick Cannon, Charlie
Murphy, and Mike Epps and played primarily to an urban audience.

Sony's hit thriller The Exorcism of Emily Rose
followed in fifth with $7.4M, off 50%, putting the 17-day tally at $62.3M.
Nicolas Cage saw his action film Lord of War
drop 46% in its second weekend to $5M giving Lions Gate $17.4M in ten days.
A $27-30M final seems likely.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin stepped closer
to joining the century club by collecting $4.3M, off only 28%, bringing
its total to $96.9M to date. Focus saw its conspiracy thriller The
Constant Gardener decline only 36% to $2.3M for a $27.7M sum.

Former chart-topper Transporter 2
took in $2.2M, down 45%, for a $39.9M cume. Rounding out the top ten was
the horror entry Cry Wolf which tumbled
51% to $2.2M. The Focus title has grossed $7.5M in ten days and should
conclude with around $12M.

A pair of films started off their runs with a bang in limited release
ahead of national rollouts on Friday. New Line's Viggo Mortensen-Ed Harris
drama A History of Violence scored
$515,992 from only 14 sites for a sizzling $36,856 per-theater average.
Meanwhile, Oliver Twist launched in
just five locations but collected $68,447 for a strong $13,689 average
for Sony. Both films expand next weekend with Violence
widening to about 1,200 theaters and Oliver
reaching approximately 800 playdates.

Three summer films dropped out of the top ten over the weekend. The
unstoppable documentary March of the Penguins
slipped 31% to $1.7M pushing its total gross to an amazing $72.8M. Warner
Independent Pictures enjoyed a nine-week run in the top ten with the G-rated
film which has become the second biggest doc of all time after Fahrenheit
9/11 which took in $119.2M last year. The French-made Penguins
should find its way to roughly $80M from North America.

Another surprise sensation, Wedding Crashers,
finally vacated the top ten after a ten-week stretch grossing $1.3M. Off
50%, the New Line blockbuster has taken in a stunning $205.5M and seems
headed for around $210M making it the distributor's sixth largest film
ever and its highest grossing non-franchise pic. Also falling from the
top ten was the DreamWorks thriller Red Eye
which grossed $1.1M, down 61%, for a $57M cume. Look for a $59M final on
the Wes Craven pic.

The top ten films grossed $84.5M which was up a remarkable 52% from
last year when The Forgotten debuted
at number one with $21M; and up 14% from 2003 when The
Rundown opened in the top spot with $18.5M.

Compared to projections, Flightplan
opened a couple of notches above my $21M forecast while Corpse
Bride was close to my $22M prediction. Roll
Bounce also opened close to my $9M projection.

For NEW reviews of Serenity, Flightplan,
and Corpse Bride, visit The
Chief Report.

Be sure to check back on Thursday
for a complete summary, including projections, for next weekend when Serenity,
Into the Blue, and The
Greatest Game Ever Played all debut.

This column is updated three times each week:
Thursday
(upcoming weekend's summary), Sunday
(post-weekend analysis with estimates), and Monday
night (actuals). Data source: Exhibitor
Relations and EDI. Opinions expressed
in this column are those solely of the author.